2018 / 12 / 15

Battling Her Way Through the Crowd - masq: A Deadly Shot from North America

Reported by Newtalk JournalistYu-Hsuan Hung"ZOWIE DIVINA PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) International Women's Invitational Tournament sees advanced 48 athletes from Europe, America, and Asia-Pacific competing on the same grounds after the preliminaries. These players will participate in an offline finals at Shanghai, China from December 13th to 16th, showcasing the most professional women's eSport competition to the world."American athlete "masq" used to be a member of Pittsburgh Knights, a CS: GO team, and used to fight alongside the famous Valens, slemmy, professor, Chaos, and DMaster. It has been two years since she first started playing CS: GO, and masq has conquered various state-held tournaments throughout the United States, making her a veteran of FPS tournaments.

Though Pittsburgh Knights had intended to form an all-girl CS: GO team, that plan has fallen through. Subsequently, with PUBG suddenly rising to worldwide fame in recent years, the owner of the team told the athletes, "I think you can switch over to PUBG." This prompted masq to start embracing Battle Royale-type FPS shooting games. When mentioning "Fortnite," which has gained enormous popularity in the States, masq explains, "Overall, CS: GO is closer to PUBG, and though I'm a pretty good shooter, I'm really not that great at building forts. So currently I have no plans of becoming a Fortnite player."

Her low maintenance hairdo is just like her straightforward personality.

What is her playing style in PUBG? Masq laughs and says, "At the beginning, my style was really hardcore in this game, and I would often have shoot-offs with my opponents, but then I realized that I would die easily this way and my ranking wasn't that good… So now I have become more strategic, and besides shooting my way out, I have also become better at surviving." Moreover, she also mentions that her favorite gun in PUBG is the Kar 98, since it is the most similar to CS: GO, making it easier for her to play with it.

Athletes who came with masq all sported the Pittsburgh Knights team uniform, and masq states that if her performance during the ZOWIE DIVINA PUBG International Women's Invitational is decent, it is highly likely that she will immediately start a PUBG professional women's team upon returning to her country. In addition, since she has never participated in all all-women eSports tournament before, ZOWIE DIVINA is a very new and interesting experience for her.

What's the biggest difference between "teaming up with guys" versus "teaming up with girls"? masq confesses, "Actually, I don't think gender makes any difference when it comes to shooting skills or how well you play. The biggest difference is personality - like when we're reviewing a game, I could be more straightforward when talking to guys, since they usually won't take harsher tones or feel reprimanded to the heart, while as girls are more delicate and discreet. They will remember everything you tell them, so overly harsh language may affect the mood between the players. So I tend to less direct; of course, this isn't always the case, since I have also come across very sensitive guys!"

Masq is very confident when it comes to the skills of her team: "Every one of my teammates is a professional eSports athlete with very solid skills. Especially Hellauchiha. I met her at Lan Café, and I immediately decided to ask our boss to sign her when I saw her game ranking and her shooting skills." Finally, masq hopes more people are able to see the skills of female athletes through this tournament, and that it will encourage more females players to dedicate themselves to eSports and to compete with male players. She also hopes that everyone can understand that the skills of female players are just as good as their male counterparts.